and the water of life; the second comprising astrologers,
necromancers, sorcerers, geomancers, and all those who pretended to
discover futurity; and the third consisting of the dealers in charms,
amulets, philters, universal-panacea mongers, touchers for the evil,
seventh sons of a seventh son, sympathetic powder compounders,
homeopathists, animal magnetizers, and all the motley tribe of quacks,
empirics, and charlatans.

But, in narrating the career of such men, it will be found that
many of them united several or all of the functions just mentioned;
that the alchymist was a fortune-teller, or a necromancer -- that he
pretended to cure all maladies by touch or charm, and to work miracles
of every kind. In the dark and early ages of European history, this is
more especially the case. Even as we advance to more recent periods,
we shall find great difficulty in separating the characters. The
alchymist seldom confined himself strictly to his pretended
science -- the sorcerer and necromancer to theirs, or the medical
charlatan to his. Beginning with alchymy, some confusion of these
classes is unavoidable; but the ground will clear for us as we
advance.

Let us not, in the pride of our superior knowledge, turn with
contempt from the follies of our predecessors. The study of the errors
into which great minds have fallen in the pursuit of truth can never
be uninstructive. As the man looks back to the days of his childhood
and his youth, and recalls to his mind the strange notions and false
opinions that swayed his actions at that time, that he may wonder at
them, so should society, for its edification, look back to the
opinions which governed the ages fled. He is but a superficial thinker
who would despise and refuse to hear of them merely because they are